Formula One News — January 2006

Although there have been a number of names which have leaked out about charges being laid against people who have worked for Toyota, there has been no official word from the German police nor from the prosecution service.

BMW is to unveil its new F1.06 this morning.

There has been a certain amount of speculation about the new Super Aguri F1 team in recent days but according to sources at Leafield everything is on schedule with the team going through the detailed administrative work with the FIA legal department.

McLaren appears to have settled out of court with legal firm Baker & McKenzie in its battle over an agreement between the team and Bernie Ecclestone.

The Cologne public prosecution service has charged three men with being involved in using a Ferrari data analysis programme. Toyota has confirmed that the three are former team principal Ove Andersson, chief designer Gustav Brunner and the team's head of aerodynamics Rene Hilhorst.

The Staatsanwaltschaft Kln, the public prosecution service in the Cologne area, has confirmed that it is filing charges against three former members of staff of Toyota Motorsport who are suspected of having used technology stolen from Ferrari.

Ferrari is due to unveil its new Formula 1 car on January 24 at Mugello but Michael Schumacher this morning gave the car its first shakedown runs at the team's Fiorano test track, completing just four laps of systems checks.

There are reports in Germany that the Staatsanwaltschaft Kln, the public prosecution service, is considering charges against Toyota's former chief designer Gustav Brunner over software which was used to design the TF103 and TF104 chassis.

The Toyota announcement of the TF106 underlines how Formula 1 is now developing and how the FIA's plans to limit aerodynamic development to three stages per year is likely to push more teams towards the system employed by Toyota, which now employs three overlapping design groups.

Panasonic Toyota Racing officially launched its 2006 Formula 1 campaign at the Toyota manufacturing facility in Valenciennes in France. The car has been running since the end of November as the team gets used to V8 engines and a new tyre partner in Bridgestone.

There will be some wet-track testing tomorrow in Jerez but the main test is now over and although Fernando Alonso took the headlines with the fastest lap of the final day in the new Renault R26, the World Champion's lap at 1m18.508s was a full second off the pace of Pedro de la Rosa's McLaren-Mercedes V10.

BMW has been looking for a new head of aerodynamics to strengthen the team in Hinwil and it seems that the team has decided that Willem Toet is the man for the job. Toet recently left the Honda Racing F1 team after falling out with the management.

Former Arrows F1 boss Tom Walkinshaw has announced the establishment of a new motorsport related business to be called the HSV Performance Centre. This will be located in Milton Keynes.

Germany's Michael Ammermueller is to move up to GP2 in 2006 with the Arden team. He will join Nicolas Lapierre at Arden International, replacing Heikki Kovalainen, who has moved up to become the Renault F1 test driver.

There are reports in Austria that one-time Minardi driver Patrick Friesacher is talking to Williams about joining the team as a second test driver. Others in the picture are Narain Karthikeyan and Nicholas Kiesa.

Former Renault test driver Franck Montagny is to join the fight for the two PKV Racing seats in Champ Car racing, against former Jordan driver Giorgio Pantano, former Toyota tester Ryan Briscoe and transplanted British rising stars Ryan Dalziel and Katherine Legge.

The squabbles over the Italian Grand Prix are not likely to amount to a real problem for the Italian Grand Prix, but the processes must be gone through and so the appeal from the Autodromo Nazionale against a court order which would make it impossible to run the Grand Prix will go to court on March 7.

The new Tom Walkinshaw Group Limited has signed a deal with the Colt Car Company to supply Mitsubishi competition cars, components and accessories from its Milton Keynes technical facility.

The Formula 1 teams are back in action in Spain with a variety of different specification cars and a few new colour schemes, most of them provisional. Recording the times set in the testing may or may not provide a sensible idea about who is competitive.

The Grand Prix Masters organisation enjoyed some success at the inaugural event in South Africa in November and is now looking ahead to expand the idea and has announced a second race which will be held on the Losail International Racetrack near Doha, Qatar on April 29.

There is a right royal mess going on in motorcycle racing which could end up depriving Ferrari of its sometime test driver - and rumoured 2007 driver - Valentino Rossi. Last year Rossi rode with the Gauloises-sponsored Yamaha factory team.

The BMW Sauber F1 Team has signed a deal with the mobile phone company O2, the deal is with the German subsidiary of the British firm O2 plc. Interestingly, O2 has just been taken over by the Spanish telecoms group Telefonica in a $31.3bn deal which creates the world's fifth largest telecoms company.

The Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari at Imola is to have been given a $12.8 grant from the local government to fund necessary upgrading work for the circuit which long ago fell behind other circuits in terms of facilities.

Toyota has announced the six drivers which it will be supporting in 2006 as part of its young driver programme. France's Franck Perera remains with the scheme and will move up to GP2 this year, racing with DAMS.

The Williams team will have a new team manager this season with the news that Dickie Stanford, who has been in the job for the last 11 years, is to take a sabbatical and assume a factory-based role rather than travelling all the time.